In most respects, the roommate-wanted notice seemed routine. Three students at the Claremont colleges in Southern California were looking for a fourth this summer to join them in an off-campus house. They added a caveat in parentheses: “POC only,” they said, using a common abbreviation for people of color.

When a classmate challenged that condition, the Pitzer College student who posted the notice on Facebook pushed back. “It’s exclusive [because] I don’t want to live with any white folks,” wrote Karé Ureña, who is black.

To some, Ureña’s request was completely understandable following a racially charged year when many students of color had demanded more support from the administration. To others, it was simple racism to exclude potential roommates based on skin color.

The thread fit into the heated discussions about race, identity, culture, freedom of speech and campus “safe spaces” that have played out at colleges across the country, from Yale to Missouri and beyond.

One of the roommates who posted the “roommate wanted” ad said they want a non-white roommate due to all the “racist social structures” they can’t “opt out of.”

The Washington Post continues:

Ureña, 20, a junior at Pitzer, and one of her roommates, Sajo Jefferson, 19, a sophomore at Pomona, defended their query in a statement to The Washington Post. Ureña describes herself as Afro-Caribbean and Jefferson identifies as a multiracial black person. Minority communities on campus, they said, constantly must deal with issues that arise when they are surrounded by classmates who don’t understand where they are coming from and have little interest in finding out.

“When and if you understand this context, it becomes clear that students of color seeking a living space that is all-POC is not only reasonable, but can be necessary,” they wrote to The Post. “We live in a world where the living circumstances of POC are grounded in racist social structures that we can not opt out of. These conditions threaten the minds, bodies and souls of people of color both within and without the realms of higher education. We are fighting to exist.”

Asked if the debate that unfolded was a reflection of national events and a glimpse of what the mood on many campuses may be like this coming year, they responded: “Our people are being killed. Every which way, through every which angle. Our people are being killed. Our housing arrangements are not racist. They are not exclusive. We are simply fighting to exist and we are fighting to exist in whatever way we can.”

Dalia Zada (PZ ’18) expressed concerns to the anti-white discrimination. “‘POC only?’ Maybe I’m missing something or misunderstanding your post, but how is that not a racist thing to say?”

“This is directed to protect POC, not white people. Don’t see how this is racist at all…” responded AJ León (PZ ’18). Sara Roschdi (PZ ’17), a Pitzer Latino Student Union member, stated, “People of color are allowed to create safe POC only spaces. It is not reverse racism or discriminatory, it is self preservation.”

“We don’t want to have to tiptoe around fragile white feelings in a space where we just want to relax and be comfortable,” commented Nina Lee, a Women’s Studies major. “I could live with white people, but I would be far more comfortable living with other poc.”

“White people always mad when they don’t feel included but at the end of the day y’all are damaging asf [as f*ck] and if a POC feels they need to protect themselves from that toxic environment THEY CAN! Quick to try to jump on a POC but you won’t call your friends out when they’re being racist asf,” noted Terriyonna Smith (PZ ’18), an Africana Studies major and Resident Assistant (RA) for the 2016-2017 year. “I’m not responding to NO comments and NOPE I don’t wanna have a dialogue.” It is not clear whether or not this refusal of dialogue represents the approaches to conversation on racism with fellow students encouraged by professors of Africana Studies or the Residence Life staff at Pitzer College.

Another Resident Assistant and Black Student Union member, Jessica Saint-Fleur (PZ ’18) added to the thread of comments, “White people have cause [sic] so much mf [motherf*cking] trauma on these campuses … why in the world would I want to live with that? Bring that into my home? A place that is supposed to be safe for me?”

One student who had been away in Italy for a study abroad program said that she immediately felt the increased racial division on campus upon her return.

Paloma Aleman, who graduated this year and describes herself as Mexican-American, saw the online debate and said that with some distance from campus she can see that the community at Pitzer is a bit sheltered. She said last year there was lengthy debate about “safe spaces” on campus, with some saying they were necessary and some calling them exclusionary.

“We have a great community in terms of creating safe spaces,” she said, noting that it caught her off-guard that the housing request this week sparked such intense reaction. “I was surprised that people thought it was an extreme request, given certain incidents that happened on campus last year.”

The fatal shooting of a black man by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., happened while Aleman was studying abroad in Italy. When she returned to campus she noticed “a huge cleavage between students of color and students who aren’t of color — a dramatic change.”

“Once I was back in the U.S., I definitely felt there was a huge shift in the racial climate,” she said. “I felt that racial tensions had definitely increased. Students of color were definitely feeling unsafe.”

What changed in such a short period of time that she felt a “huge shift in the racial climate”? What happened that “students of color were definitely feeling unsafe” in a “dramatic” shift from her experience at the same college before her study abroad in Italy?

Personally, I’m failing to see how anything has improved with all these “open dialogues” and “national discussions” about race; I’m failing to see anything positive coming out of movements like “Black Lives Matter.” Instead, all we seem to accomplish is more division, more negative feelings (i.e. hate, people suddenly feeling unsafe), and more justification for more of the same.

Comments

It’s the POCs that commit most of the assaults and murders, it’s the POCs that do the vast majority of the rioting and it’s the POCs that do all the criminal flashmobbing, yet they are the ones claiming to feel unsafe?

Happy days are here again for the white students. They won’t have to put up with rap crap music when they’re trying to study, the stench of cloying hair and body gels, having their stuff stolen, being bullied, being waked up by loud-mouthed cell phone ebonics conversations at 2am, or constantly being hit up for money.

When the black students start finding their stuff missing, they’ll change their tune. But by then, the segregation model they wanted will be in effect.

Got news for the special snotflakes, it isn’t always about you. Do you care one wit about anyone else’s experiences? College is a place to learn about other people and not about constructing a world where you are the center of it. Nobody cares how hard your life is. If you think than because someone isn’t your same color that they haven’t had difficulties in their lives too. Grow up and get over yourselves. College is for learning academics and if you’re too fragile to study and learn, the real world isn’t going to put up with your insecurities. The real world has no safe spaces.

Any bets on the likelihood that Karé Ureña has super thin skin, and chip on her shoulder looking for any chance to complain that she has been slighted because of her color? Further, she is probably struggling academically because she was truly an affirmative action admission?

“We are simply fighting to exist and we are fighting to exist in whatever way we can.”

What an unbelievably stupid thing to say. And, sadly, these goofballs really believe themselves to oppressed. Our public education system has been taken over by progressives, and they are filling the Left’s need for a constant supply of ignorant, dependent victims to ensure their continued existence. So far, it looks like their strategy is pretty darn effective, too.

In addition, our public education system has been dumbed down and simplified to ridiculous degrees in order for people like her to earn the (inflated) grades they need to be admitted into a decent college in the first place.

Three students at the Claremont colleges in Southern California were looking for a fourth this summer to join them in an off-campus house. They added a caveat in parentheses: “White people only”they said.

I went to one of the Claremont Colleges and paid a little less for a degree. In the 70’s.

Are they worth that now? Well you can go to classes at any campus, and 4 of them are in the top 20 or so liberal arts schools, and one of them is often the #1 undergraduate STEM school. You could do worse for your money.

Although I’m increasingly glad I don’t ahfve to deal with this crap today.

The administrators have caved and caved, and they aren’t getting the peace they craved. Their best move would be to revoke all of these safe zones and racial separations and expel everyone who gives them lip.

I say give them the segregation they’re asking for. It’s better for the white kids. They can get plenty of exposure to other people and cultures just by going to class and hanging out around campus. They don’t have to live together.

One of the main justifications for affirmative action in college admissions (in other contexts what colleges call “affirmative action” is known as “racial profiling”) is that students from various “cultures” will learn together, hang out together, live together, eat together, and so forth. Thus they will learn tolerance and acceptance.

Spot on. Affirmative Action in admissions is because our betters think we need to mingle, White and Black. Housing shouldn’t be forced mixing. (Unless you’re in the service. Or on a traveling athletic team and roommates are assigned. Why would they be assigned? Offensive line players bunk with offensive line players, etc. ) If they don’t want to room with a White, that is fine. The real problem here isn’t that they don’t want to have a White room mate. The problem is they are so rude about it. They could just interview people and say to the White folks “We just don’t think it would be a good match.” Who cares?

Do we care because we are being rejected?
Do we care because they are saying something out loud that we don’t get to think, and we’re offended at the double standard?

Great comment, and one of the few here made up of humanity without a strong taint of racial animus.

In answer to your question: Orwellian, and we could have (in fact, some of us did) predicted it.

The great impulses of the civil rights movement were almost immediately subverted to Collectivist ends. The great legislation that came out of that era, which you can read about by reviewing the debates prior to passage, was immediately corrupted, often by the people who assured America that some of the abuses “could never happen”.

Remember to check stuff happening today against the writings of the Frankfurt School, and remember that they had the vision to target their subversion of America via the education system.

This is what happens when you admit students with lesser qualifications. Deep down they know they can’t compete with whites and asians so they major in navel gazing or some other soft subject. They wonder why other students can’t understand them when the other students are just busy learning and competing. Both my kids are in engineering, where there are precious few POCs, probably because they can’t compete and most likely are unwilling to work as hard as my kids do. So they major in whining instead and end up working for nonprofits because no one else will hire them.

You’ll notice that when POCs “earn” (cough, cough) a PhD, invariably it’s in “education” (the most touchy of the feely), or it’s in a “studies” course, Black Studies or “Womyn’s” Studies being among the more stupid. Hard work not required.

My son too earned, and it was earned, his BS in engineering, a no-nonsense discipline.

Unless they’ve just arrived here, the liars featured in this piece saw their parents fight for the right to enter a dormitory, supported creation of laws to guarantee their children could live wherever they want, and fought to ensure ‘separate but equal’ was banished forever.

But, in order to make headlines that divert the attention that the vast majority of “POC” are killed/beaten/robbed by “POC”, these folks want segregated ‘everything’.

Let ’em have it, but mandate truth in advertising- “I want a non-white roommate because I hate white people” would do. Let the world see just what they want and make sure you allow it for everyone else too.